


ghost towns (and the way you light them up)

by solarsystems



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Drug Use, Gen, M/M, Oral Sex, everyone's a bit sad and i make references to winters and drugs, i should mention that it's past ot5, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-10
Updated: 2013-10-10
Packaged: 2017-12-29 01:10:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/999085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solarsystems/pseuds/solarsystems
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>non au: zayn is winter, and it's cold without his suns (all four of them).</p>
            </blockquote>





	ghost towns (and the way you light them up)

**Author's Note:**

> for lola and sharon, this fic would never have been completed with you.

_Once upon a time, there were five boys in a kingdom beneath the sun._

_They sang for crowds so big you couldn’t see the end of them, and they were happy. There was sunshine flowing through their veins, and their softly beating hearts always echoed the others._

_They bled into each other, because sunshine boys love the kind of love that can’t, won’t fit into a ribcage._

_But after years and years of singing, they got tired. They carried suitcases underneath their eyes, and the sunshine wasn’t as bright anymore._

_The girls outside their windows screamed their names like prayers, a love - an adoration - so heavy they couldn't carry it even across five strong sets of shoulders._

_And the monsters got between them, as they do. The beasts snuck inside their chests, carved them open, and pulled them apart._

_The boys with the sunshine hearts turned hollow, with only the people’s screams filling up the spaces between them._

_And one day they had crashed, burned out. You’d imagine the end of the world being loud, but it’s not. The world ends with a whimper, not a bang._

_*_

Every day is the end of the world. It crashes and it wallows in flames. Time burns his throat on the way down, along with the whiskeyvodkamalibubourbon.

Zayn devours everything he sees, leaving destruction in his wake. He sucks bars dry, swallowing every last drop of mind-numbing substances he can find.

Did you know? ‘If you drink enough vodka, it tastes like love.’

His fingertips scurry across unknown skin, camera flashes breaking him apart. His body is in a riot, fairy dust and blood mixing together until there's nothing of a bright boy left inside of him.

Zayn Malik, washed up popstar. He curls in on himself whenever he hears those words, can’t let himself be reminded of the way it felt to be tucked in between four boys that he lovedlovedloved. Four bright boys, as if made just for him, how could he not?

He pukes in an alley behind the club, vomit burning his throat on the way up, and he can see the bright lights from the cameras even when his eyes are closed.

A cab is hailed for him, and he throws himself into the back seat. The leather is soft against his cheek.

Somehow his security gave the driver his address, and he stumbles onto the pavement when the cab has stopped outside of his complex. He’s not even surprised when he trips and falls face first onto the concrete.

Everything is spinning when he lifts his head off the cold ground, and there is some kind of wet stuff on his face, dripping down his neck. He thinks it might be blood.

When he finally manages to find his keys on the inside of his goddamn pants, there’s a small group of shouting photographers behind him. He flips them off, and the shutters go crazy. He’s inside the complex and there are steps ahead of him, but he takes a right and gets in the lift.

He feels seasick, his limbs crashing against the side table and he just wants to sleep. But before he crashes on his unmade bed - sheets from weeks ago – there are needs to attend to. He snorts a white line of pretty, pretty powder off the bedside table and goes under.

The next time he comes up for air, there is a pretty blonde next to him, tucked into his sheets. She screams when he tries to dig his fingers into her thigh, and he doesn’t miss her when she leaves, underwear in her hand and sweater hastily thrown over her shoulder.

His prettypretty powder is still there, so he let’s the fairydust crawl into his bloodstream whilst he burrows further into his sheets. There are boys underneath him sometimes, and their mouths taste like ashes. He chases a dying sun between his hipbones and goes under.

It’s winter and it’s fall, it’s spring and it’s summer. Seasons are constant even when you aren’t. Zayn has learned so, after years of living out of a suitcase, foreign countries flashing past your eyes in a glimpse.

Once upon a blue moon, he dreams of things that aren’t snow monsters or the deep ocean swallowing him up. Sometimes his brain will let him have good dreams, dreams of soft light and travelling the world with his best friends.

_*_

_They’re in a city in the middle of the US, and the days are starting to go together, the lines blurring. But the weight of four other people is constant, an unending comfort among skyscrapers and amphitheatres. There are hands fisted in his hoodie, the smell of boy lying pungent in the air._   
_Niall snuffles and turns his head into the crook of Zayn’s neck, whilst Harry burrows further into his lap._

_He wonders what his life was like before them, how he could ever manage to live without their grasping hands against his skin._

_The kind of love that the five of them share is too big to fit into his chest, and it feels like his heart might burst out of his ribcage when any of them look at him with crinkly bright eyes._

_*_

Zayn used to be a bright boy, with twinkling eyes and a softly beating heart. Now he’s stuck with these hollow eyes and a swollen heart that just aches for anything to hold on to. He’s a boy with a swollen heart and this is his life.

It's 2016, and this is the part of Zayn's life where he sleeps. He sleeps away lifetimes, buried alive in his cotton grave. He slept away the months since he lost his suns (all four of them). He can feel the grittiness of his dirty sheets against his temple and the saltiness of dried tears is still present on his cheekbones.

The lost softness of the cotton reminds him of burying his toes in white sand on a beach in Europe, Turkey or maybe Spain.

He remembers Louis and Harry sprinting into the waves, hands clasped tightly between them as they ran into the ocean, the bigenormoustremendous sea that could swallow them up. Zayn thinks it's an overused and tired metaphor, but running into things headfirst is kind of Louis and Harry's way.

They grip the other's hand tightly, make out in australian cities and they never apologize.

The morning newspaper hits the floor with a thud. He sees the black bolded letters form the words "HARRY STYLES ENTERS REHAB" and everything blacks out. When he surfaces, the magazine is still there.

The sound erupting from his throat can't be human, the way his vocal chords curl in on themselves and make him choke. It's as if everything is too close, too loud and way too sudden. His Harry is in rehab. His small doe-eyed Harry who loved everyone everywhere all the time. His Harry who got high with radio dj's, had sex with prostitutes and loved too loud.

Harry is a kingdom, their kingdom, ignited and set on fire.

Barely managing to control his limbs, the shattered remnants of a bright boy gets off the floor and moves on.

The days after Harry's admission pass by in a daze. Everything is too close, the bedroom walls and the entire world.

He makes the trip up to Bradford, and when he steps out of the cab, there is nothing to hold on to. The house he bought them, with the money he made from lighting himself on fire every night in front of fifty thousand people.

He barely recognizes his sisters. Safaa hides behind their mother's legs and Waliyha storms out, muttering something unintelligible out of the corner of her pouty lips. The door hitting the frame makes his spine shiver, the redred blood rushing to his head.

The only one who stays is Doniya, and she carefully brushes his hair out of his eyes. He takes the hand she offers him and follows her up the stairs, barely managing to lift his feet in a way that will allow him to ascend. He's just tired, tired of being Zayn Malik, tired of hollow empires and being locked away in a kingdom beyond the horizon.

Her perfume smells of musk, and he revels in the familiar scent. It reminds him of afternoons spent on a couch in their living room, carefully brushing his sister's hair back and tying it into long braids. He remembers her soft hands and Danny's laugh coming from somewhere behind him, her giggling and his hoarse howl mixing with each other.

When she sits him down on her bed, it's like everything inside him collapses in on itself. The snow he inhaled before he left is slowly trickling out of his every pore and he can feel his hands shake under her watchful eyes.

"Zee, what happened to you," his sister asks slowly, her hands threading through his dark locks. He merely burrows further into her arms, burying his face - his soul - in her soft embrace. They lie like that for what feels like hours, only interrupted by their mother creaking open the door and leaving two cups of tea on the bedside table.

And then, they sleep. He resurfaces alone when the night has come, when the dark has created vastness in a crowded room.

Sighing, he pushes himself off the bed and looks back at his sister. Her dark hair is spilling over the sheets like an ocean, like the deep sea drowning him. He kisses her forehead, chapped lips barely touching her golden skin and then, he's gone.

He slips through each bedroom in his old home, the floorboards creaking underneath him when his feet touches the ground beneath him. Safaa snores into her pillow and the gentle brush of his fingers against her temple makes her curl into his touch, like a small kitten.

The gesture reminds him of a certain curly haired boy, who seeped of brightness and, in the end, became dark and hollow, serpent tongue twisting around his vocals.

He stays in the door of Waaliyha's room, watching her curvy form breathe castles into the stale air. He loves his sisters, with all of his cocaine heart. It just took him a while to realize, he thinks. There were years where he wouldn't even call them on christmas, couldn't remember their favorite meal or their eye color.

Somewhere deep inside his bones, something has shifted. Coming here, coming to Bradford where his life started has lit him up, a drizzle of brightness entering his bloodstream.

If he closes his eyes, he can feel the overthrown kingdom behind his lungs beginning to put itself back together.

It’s been three months since Harry went to rehab. He got out eight days, five hours and thirty seven minutes ago. Zayn knows the numbers by heart, has stuffed a clock between his lungs.

He doesn’t know what will happen when the timer reaches zero, but he knows it’s better than what’s happening now.

He goes to clubs, lets girls with pouty lips and small hands suck his cock and he kisses them until they choke on his smoke and his pointy teeth.

It’s thursday. It’s been seventeen days, fifteen hours and three minutes. Zayn is at a small pub in the north of London, far away from eavesdropping ears and prying ears. He has his hand tucked between some girl’s thighs, but he’s not going to fuck her.

He’s stretched too thin to let anyone come that close.

A speaker on stage introduces the next acoustic act and a tall boy reaches for the mic. There’s nothing extraordinary about him, not until he opens his mouth. And then there’s burning.

Zayn’s heart is beating like a fucking funeral drum in his chest, because Harry is right there. He’s right there, merely feet away. He’s closer than he has been in over two years and Zayn’s body can’t deal with it.

The adrenaline is rushing through his paper thin veins when he scans the body he knows so well, the body he mapped out and discovered when they were sewn together at the heart.

When he manages to take a few steps back, he can see how hollow Harry looks. His face looks almost scraped out, his features thin and watery. He wonders what they did to him at rehab, what they stole and never gave back.

His hands, his enormous but oh so soft hands are curled around the mic stand, and the sound of his siren songs fill the air around them.

It’s a song Zayn has heard a thousand times, and then some. It sounds like a house made for five bodies, a place just for them. But he doesn’t look like he used to, not at all. He looks like their kingdom overthrown.

When Zayn stumbles forward towards the boy with the jutting hip bones, he knows the world is ending.

Harry sees him, and it’s like a dying sun has set him ablaze, swallowed him up. The voice flowing out from the speakers falters, and the sound of a mic being dropped echoes through the room and then Zayn's fingers are grasping for anything to hold on to, and finds the soft fabric of Harry's t-shirt.

The badumbadum of Harry's hummingbird heart feels like it might turn the kingdom inside of him into ruins.

It doesn’t hurt though, not really. The feeling of Harry’s skin on his is everything he’ll ever need, even when it shakes him to his core.

He feels himself jostling away another body from the crowds, hiding his bright boy from the vultures. It's like Harry never stopped touching him, never stopped loving him.

It feels a lot like love, the way his fingers scratch against Zayn's golden skin.

The bathroom is empty, tile floors and dirty sinks rising up against them and making the room feel crowded even with just two hollow boys occupying it. This is no place for love to grow.

There are stories hidden here, deeply embedded in their skin. Stories of golden boys who held hands underneath tables and whispered in voices too loud for liking, loved too loud.

But this is not that story. This is a story of those boys finding each other again, finding themselves in a dirty bathroom with loudloud music vibrating through the earth underneath them.

He lets go of Harry and looks up at him, into his emerald eyes. Harry opens his arms, as to let Zayn find his place between them. It’s been a long time since Zayn felt at home in someone else’s embrace.

When Harry opens his mouth, he speaks in a hushed whisper, as to not disturb the air around him. It’s familiar, like the way he has his hands tucked safely behind his back and his toes are pointing inwards. It feels almost like home.

“I miss you,” he says, and then, and then the sun explodes.

Harry’s lips are chapped. When he feels them slide against his own, he can’t stop himself from wondering what has changed since two years ago, how this broken little boy has changed the way he kisses.

They kiss for what feels like years, and Zayn thinks it might be. Everything they’re not saying is tucked into their mouths, hidden underneath their tongues.

That thought is soon tucked away at the furthest corner of his brain, as Harry has started unbuttoning his jeans. The drag of those long, nimble fingers is intoxicating and Zayn can’t look away.

He has to get his cock out, because he’s aching against the denim and he just needs to get a hand on himself. Harry looks equally aroused, as his thick cock slaps against the flat of his stomach. Zayn doesn’t speak, as that will break everything and shatter it against the cold bathroom floor.

Neither of them last long, both enveloped in the tight heat of Zayn's fist, cocks rubbing together and creating heatheatheat.

When Harry has stuttered out his release and his come has splattered on the linoelum floor, he bursts into tears. He sobs like the world is ending, and it might be.

Zayn tucks his cock back into his pants, but he doesn’t miss the way Harry is wringing his hands in front of him. He looks a lot like a baby bird, bent and hollowed out.

“Let’s get you home,” Zayn says, and steadily tucks Harry into his own pair of jeans. His hands are shaking a bit, but the other boy doesn’t make a motion to stop him, just lets him handle him, trusting Zayn to touch him with care.

Zayn drags him out of the club, hands clasped tightly together. The sun is starting to come up, and it’s hollow light casts shadows, making them look ten feet tall and skinny like the branches in the empty trees. It matches, somehow.

They get in a taxi, and Harry starts kissing up Zayn’s neck, but his lips keep stuttering when he hiccups. There’s something broken about this little boy, the way he keeps kissing and crying.

But that is the way, Zayn supposes. Harry has never known any other way to get the bad things out, than to kiss them away. He had to get the sharp things out of his lungs somehow, right? It’s only fair.

Zayn just holds Harry’s hand in his, bitten nails hidden behind Zayn’s tanned hands. If you love something, it will try it’s hardest to love you back. That is how it’s supposed to go, and it does.

His building is in Holland Park, tucked between posh mansions and penthouses atop of skyscrapers. There’s some symbolism there, but he doesn’t bother. He has a tiny little washed up popstar under his arm, and there’s nothing else that he really can think about.

Zayn opens the door to his apartment and guides Harry inside, arms around necks and there’s dust lying atop the counters of his kitchen, and Harry is still trying to kiss him.

Loving a boy like Harry is winter, it’s chapped lips, it’s a cold kitchen floor. It’s not going to live until summer, it’s not your childhood pet. Zayn knows this, and he still can’t look away.

He takes his time, slips Harry’s brogues off, pulls his socks up and undresses him slowslowslow. He smoothes his hand through the matted hair on Harry’s scalp, whispers, “Love you,” because that’s what they do. They always come back to each other in the end. Winters return when they’re meant to.


End file.
